“Well, if there is,” I speak low, approaching him as I study the items on top of the sheets, “why didn’t he kick us out when we got here?”
Ten holds up his phone, looking around the room, while I skim over the things on the bedside table and bed. There’s a watch on an old, black suede cuff laying on top of a picture of, what looks like, nearly an identical watch. There’s also a couple of paperbacks sitting on a pillow, an iPod with headphones attached, and a notebook with a pen lying next to it. I pick up the notebook and flip it over, seeing what looks like a man’s writing.
Anything goes when everyone knows
Where do you hide when their highs are your lows?
So much, so hard, so long, so tired,
Let them eat until you’re ground into nothing.
Don’t you worry your glossy little lips,
What they savor ‘ventually loses its flavor.
I wanna lick, while you still taste like you.
My chest rises and falls in shallow breaths, and my thighs clench.
I wanna lick…
Damn. A cool sweat spreads down my back as a picture of lips whispering those words against my ear hits me. I’ve never been much into poetry, but I wouldn’t mind more from this guy.
A familiar feeling falls over me, though, as I study the tails of the y’s and the sharp strokes of the s’s that look like little lightning bolts.
That’s weird.
But no, the paper is cluttered with writing over more writing and scribbles and scratches. It’s a mess. The rest looks nothing like Misha’s letters.
“Well,” I hear Ten’s voice mumble at my side, “that’s creepy.”
“What?” I ask, tearing my eyes away from the rest of the poem and turning my head to look at him.
But he’s not watching me. I follow to where his flashlight is shining, and I finally see the wall. Dropping the notebook to the bed, I peer up as Ten runs the light over the entire surface.
ALONE.
It’s written in large black letters, spray-painted and jagged, each letter nearly as tall as me.
“Real creepy,” Ten repeats.
I inch backward, glancing around the room and taking it all in.
Yeah. Photos on the wall with faces scratched out, ambiguous poetry, mysterious, depressing words written on the wall…
Not to mention someone is sleeping in here. In this abandoned, dark tunnel.
The distant whine suddenly catches my attention again, and I follow it, leaning down closer to the bed. I pick up the headphones and hold them to my ear, hearing “Bleed It Out” playing.
Shit. I immediately drop the headphones, a breath catching in my throat.
“The iPod’s on,” I say, shooting up straight. “Whoever he is, he was just here. We need to go. Now.”
Ten moves for the doorway, and I turn away from the bed, but then I stop.
Spinning back around, I dip down and rip the page out of the notebook. I have no idea why I want it, but I do.
If it is a guy living here, he probably won’t miss it, anyway, and if he does, he won’t know where it went.
“Go,” I tell Ten, nudging his back.
And I fold up the page and stuff it in my back pocket.
Holding up our phones, we step out of the room and turn left. But just then someone catches me in their arms, and I yelp as I’m squeezed until I can’t breathe.
“Gotch-ya!” a male voice boasts. “So how about that ride now?”
Trey.
Squirming, I pull out of his hold and twist around. Lyla, J.D., and Bryce stand behind him, laughing.
“Damn!” Ten shouts, breathing hard. He was obviously caught off guard by their sudden appearance, too.
“You might’ve turned off the flashlights,” Lyla scolds with a smirk on her face. “We could see them as soon as we came down.”
I move past them, back toward the stairs, ignoring her. If we hadn’t been investigating that room, the flashlights on our phones would’ve been off.
“What are you guys doing down here anyway?” J.D. asks.
“Just go,” I order, losing patience. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everyone moves ahead, back down the tunnel, and I glance over my shoulder, scanning the nearly pitch blackness and the doorway to the room where we’d just been.
Nothing.
Dark corners, shadows, dank glimmers from the fluorescent light hitting the puddles of water… I see nothing.
But I breathe hard, unable to shake the creepy feeling. Someone is there.
“This was not the kind of fun I was thinking of when you guys suggested the Cove,” Lyla whines, side-stepping the small pools of water.
I turn back around, ignoring my fear as I rush up the steps. “Yeah, well, don’t worry,” I mumble just loud enough for them to hear. “The backseat of J.D.’s car isn’t far away.”
“Hell yeah.” J.D. chuckles.
And I resist the urge for one more glance back down the dark tunnel.
I climb the stairs, still feeling eyes on me.
“Let’s go, ladies!” Coach pounds her fist on the lockers twice as she passes by. The girls giggle and whisper around me, and I comb my fingers through my hair, sweeping it up into a messy ponytail.
“Yeah, I hear they’re installing cameras,” Katelyn Stephens says to a group as she sits on the bench. “They’re hoping to catch him red-handed.”
I roll on some deodorant and toss the container back into my gym bag before checking my lip gloss in the mirror on the locker door.
Cameras, huh? In the school?
Good to know.
I pull the top of my cheerleading uniform down over my head, covering my bra, and smooth my shirt and skirt down. We’re recruiting new team members, since so many of us are graduating soon, so Coach has been asking us to wear our uniforms to school some days to hopefully get more freshman interested.
“I was wondering what their next move was going to be,” another girl chimes in. “He keeps getting past them.”
“And I, for one, hopes he keeps it up.” Lyla adds. “Did you see what he wrote this morning?”
Everyone falls silent, and I know exactly what they’re looking at. I turn my head, glancing to the wall, right over the doorway to the gym teachers’ offices. Flapping ever so gently from the AC blowing out of the vent is a large piece of white butcher paper taped haphazardly to the wall.
I smile to myself, my heartbeat picking up pace, and turn back to finish getting ready.
“Don’t knock masturbation,” Mel Long says, reciting the message we all saw laying behind the butcher paper before morning practice a while ago, “it’s sex with someone I love.”
And everyone starts laughing. I bet they don’t even know it’s a Woody Allen quote.
They discovered the graffiti this morning, here in the girls’ locker room this time, and while the teachers covered it up with paper, everyone saw what was behind it.
The school has been vandalized twenty-two times in the last month, and today makes twenty-three.
At first, it was slow—one occurrence here and there—but now it’s more frequent, nearly every day, and sometimes several times a day. As if “the little punk,” as he or she has come to be known, has developed a taste for breaking into the school at night and leaving random messages on the walls.
“Well,” I say, hooking my bag over my shoulder and slamming my locker door shut. “With the cameras going in all the hallways and covering every entrance soon, I’m sure he or she will either wise up and quit, or get caught. Their days are numbered.”
“I hope he gets caught,” Katelyn says, excitement in her eyes. “I want to know who it is.”
“Boo.” Lyla pouts. “That’s no fun.”
I twist around and head out of the locker room. Yeah, of course it’s no fun if Punk gets caught. No one knows what to expect when they come to school in the morning, and it’s gotten to the point where the first thing on everyone’s agenda is to look for whatever m
essage the vandal has left. They think the intrigue is fun, and while they’re curious, Falcon’s Well would be just a little bit more tedious without the mystery.
Sometimes the messages are serious.
I polish up my sheen, but you can’t shine shit.
-Punk
And then everyone is quiet, visibly brushing off the cryptic message as if it’s nothing, but you know it’s in their heads all day, a thought without a leash.
And then sometimes it’s comical.
FYI, your mom wouldn’t date your dad if she could make that choice again.
-Punk
And everyone laughs.
But the next day, I heard, several parents called the school, because their sons and daughters had given them the third degree to see if it was true.
The messages are never signed, and they’re never directed to anyone in particular, but they’ve become anticipated. Who is he? What will he write next? How is he doing it without being seen?
And they all assume it’s a “he” and not a “she” even though there’s no proof it’s one or the other.
But the mystery buzzes around school, and I’m pretty sure attendance is up just so no one misses what happens next.
Strolling up to my locker, I drop my bag to the ground, pulling in a long breath. The sudden weight on my chest makes it a struggle to inhale as I twist the dial on the lock, keying in the combination.
My head falls forward, but I snap it back up.
Shit.
Opening the door, shielding myself for all the eyes around me, I reach under my skirt, under the tight elastic of my spandex shorts, and grab my inhaler.
“Hey, can I borrow your suede skirt today?”
I jump, releasing my inhaler, and pulling my hand out.
Lyla stands to my left while Katelyn and Mel hover at my right.
Picking up my backpack, I dig out my books from last night and load them into my locker. “You mean the expensive one that I sold half my closet to a consignment shop to pay for?” I ask, shoving my books onto the shelf. “Not a chance.”
“I’ll tell your mom about all the clothes you hide in your locker.”
“And I’ll tell your mom about all the times you weren’t actually sleeping at my house for the night,” I retort, smiling as I place my bag on the hook in my locker and look to Katelyn and Mel.
The other girls laugh, and I turn back to my locker, retrieving my Art notebook and English text for my first two classes.
“Please?” she begs. “My legs look so good in it.”
I pull in a breath with everything I have, the struggle to fill my lungs growing like there’s a thousand pounds sitting on my chest.
Fine. Whatever. Anything to get her out of here. I reach into my locker and pull out the skirt hanging on a plastic hook I’d stuck in the back.
I toss the smooth, tan fabric at her. “Don’t have sex in it.”
She smiles gleefully, fanning out the skirt to have another look at it. “Thank you.”
I grab my small bag, filled with drawing pencils, and my phone.
“What do you have right now?” Lyla asks, folding the skirt over her arm. “Art?”
I nod.
“I don’t understand how you can’t get out of that. I know you hate it.”
I close my locker, hearing the bell ring and seeing everyone around us start to hustle. “It’s almost the end of the year. I’ll live.”
“Mmm,” she replies absently, probably having not heard me. “Alright, let’s go.” She jerks her chin to Mel and Katelyn and then looks to me as she backs away. “See you at lunch, okay? And thank you.”
All three of them disappear down the hallway, lost in the throng of bodies as they head for Spanish, their first class of the day. Everyone flits about, rushing upstairs, slamming lockers, and diving into classrooms…and I feel the ache in my chest start to spread. My stomach burns from the strain of trying to breathe, and I make my way down the hallway, my shoulder brushing the lockers for support.
I shoot a quick smile to Brandon Hewitt, one of Trey’s friends, as I pass, and soon, all the doors start to close and the footsteps and chatter fade away. A tiny whistle drifts up from my lungs as my breath shakes from the inside as if little strings are flapping in my throat.
I blink hard, the world starting to spin behind my lids.
I draw in as much air as I can, knowing they don’t see my white knuckles, me clenching my books, or the needles swishing around in my throat like a swizzle stick as I struggle not to cough.
I’m good at pretending.
The last door closes, and I quickly reach under my skirt and pull out the inhaler I usually keep hidden there. Holding it to my mouth, I press down and draw in a hard breath as the spray releases, giving me my medicine. The bitter chemical, which always reminds me of the Lysol I caught in my mouth when I was a kid when my mom sprayed it around the house, hits the back of my throat and drifts down my esophagus. Leaning against the wall, I press down once more, drawing in more spray, and I close my eyes, already feeling the weight lifting from my chest.
Breathing in and out, I hear my pulse throb in my ears and feel my lungs expand wider and wider, the invisible hands that were squeezing them, slowly releasing.
This one came quick.
Usually it happens while I’m outside or exerting myself. Whenever the air gets thick, I excuse myself to the restroom and do what I need to do. I hate when it happens all of sudden like this. Too many people around, even in the bathrooms. Now I’m late for class.
Slipping the inhaler up under the hem of my spandex shorts again, I take in a welcome deep breath and release it, readjusting the books in my arm.
Spinning back around, I turn right and take the next hallway, climbing the stairs up to Art. It’s the only class I have every day that I enjoy, but I let my friends think I hate it. Art, band, theater…they’re all targets for ridicule, and I don’t want to hear it from them.
Gingerly opening the classroom door, I step in and look around for Ms. Till, but I don’t see her. She must be in the supply closet.
And I don’t need another tardy, so...
I walk briskly across the room and head up the aisle, raising my eyes and pausing when I see Trey. He lounges at my table, in the seat next to mine.
Annoyance pricks at me. Awesome.
He must be skipping Chemistry—which he’s already failed and has to pass in order to graduate. This is my happy hour, and he’ll ruin it.
I let out a small sigh and force a half-smile. “Hey.”
He pulls out my chair with one hand, relaxing back in his seat and gazing at me as I sit down. Ms. Till probably won’t even notice he’s not one of her students.
“So I was thinking…” Trey broaches as everyone chatters around us. “Are you doing anything May seventh?”
“Hmmm…” I play cavalier as I lean back in my chair, fold my arms over my chest, and cross my legs. “I seem to remember something going on that night, but I forget.”
He places his hand on the back of my chair, cocking his head at me. “Well, do you think you can get a dress?”
“I…” But then I stop, seeing someone enter the room.
A guy walks in, his tall form strolling across the classroom and up the aisle toward us. I don’t breathe.
He looks familiar. Where do I know him from?
He carries nothing—no backpack, books, or even a pencil—and takes a seat at the empty table across the aisle from mine.
I glance around for Ms. Till, wondering what’s going on. Whoever he is, he isn’t in this class, but he just walked in as if he’s always been here.
Is he new?
I steal a glance to my left, studying him. He relaxes in his chair, one hand resting on the table, and his eyes focused ahead of him. Black stains coat the outside of his hand, from his wrist to the top of his pinky, like mine gets when I’m drawing and resting my hand on the paper, grinding it into the ink.
“Hello?” I hear Trey prompt.<
br />
I tear my eyes away, clearing my throat. “Um, yeah, I’m sure I can manage it.”
He wants me to buy a dress. Prom is May seventh, and no one else has asked me, because rumor has it Trey was asking me. He took his time, and I was starting to get worried. I want to go to prom, even if it is with him.
I let my eyes drift to the new guy again, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. Dirt smudges his dark blue jeans, as well as his fingers and elbow, but his slate-gray T-shirt is clean, and his shoes look in decent shape. His eyes are nearly hidden beneath thick lashes, and his short, dark brown hair hangs just lightly over his forehead. There’s a silver ring on the side of his bottom lip, catching the light. I fold my lips between my teeth as I stare at it, imagining what it feels like to have a piercing there.
“And maybe your hair done?” Trey goes on at my right. “But leave it down, because I like it down.”
I turn back, pulling my eyes away from the boy’s mouth, and right myself as I refocus my attention.
Prom. We were talking about prom.
“No problem,” I answer.
“Good.” He smiles and leans back. “Because I know this great taco place—”
He bursts into laughter, the guy next to him joining in on the joke, and I warm with a moment’s embarrassment. Oh, you thought he was asking you to prom? Stupid girl.
But I don’t pout at his attempt to make me feel like an idiot. My armor deflects, and I advance. “Well, have fun. I’ll be at prom with Manny. Ain’t that right, Manny?” I call out, kicking the leg of the boy’s chair in front of me a few times, drawing the Emo kid’s attention.
Manny Cortez jerks but keeps facing forward, trying to ignore us.
Trey and his friend keep laughing, but it’s focused on the weak kid now, and I can’t help but feel a sliver of satisfaction.
The other feelings are there, too. The guilt, the disgust at myself, the pity for Manny and how I used him just now…
But I amused Trey, and now Manny and any shame I feel is far below where I sit. I look down at it. I know it’s there. But it’s like seeing ants from an airplane. I’m in the clouds, too high for what’s on the ground to be of much concern.